Where is Bec and J?: Everybody! Come!

Why hello there, how are you? We're well.... digging this beautiful weather we've been having and even more so that its school holidays! Whoop whoop! That's right, its that time of the year again where I actually get some child free, work free, duty free, time off!!!! Cue happy dance. No, that's not nice is it? Its not that I WANT to be child free. Work free? Definitely! But time away from Chloe is painful, I feel guilty dropping her at day care when I know I'm just going to sit at home and creep onto the balcony to see what she's doing. But it gives me a chance to catch up on stuff that I cant do with her around, like write this.... So its a catch 22 you see.... I both love the time off, but feel guilty about it all in one. Ahhh, what a conundrum, bloody mummy guilt, gets you every time. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Ok, lets shake it off..... and get on with it.

STATS (as of the 15/9)
Height: 86.5cm
Weight: 12.2kg
Size: 1-2
Shoe: 5-6

EATING and DRINKING

Chloe now never sits at her table for dinner, she just sits (or stands) on one of our dining room chairs and has dinner next to us. Her breakfast and lunch occur at her table as we tend to eat those meals ourselves seated on the couch. She eats everything we do, with slight variations in the meat department, as she seems to have issues chewing and swallowing tougher pieces of meat. She LOVES anything pasta based, as well as Mexican meals and chicken skewers. There's no issues around vegetables and she'll devour corn on the cob and be eyeing yours off if you haven't 'fi-ished' before she has. Its the quick and the dead around here when she's hungry. She always devours her meals of a night time and we believe that's as we keep snacking to a minimum of an afternoon. Normally limiting it to a cino, which she loves! After her party we had some sprinkles left over from the fairy bread, one day I sprinkled them on top of her cino and since then its IMPOSSIBLE to deliver one without sprinkles. hehehe. But its a nice little activity of an afternoon, mummy has her 'offee (as she calls it) and bubbi her cino. Then off we will shoot for the afternoon activity. Its wonderful.

COMMUNICATION

Goodness gracious, Chloe is a chatterbox! Her vocab and conversational skills are off the chart. But no shock there right? She loves to engage us, her friends, everyone in discussions about this or that. We've encouraged her to retell her day after day care or to daddy/mummy on the days that they haven't spent time with her. She's very good at one word responses and in some cases stringing words together to retell an event. Just yesterday I took her to playschool and over dinner asked her to tell daddy what she'd done today... her reply 'Playschool, Tao, go, where Tao go? Abby, go, bye bye' Which was great!

She's also developed some pretty neat vocab like 'wait', 'one more' and 'everybody, come!' Its deliciously cute! She's also developed a love of singing and will sing "happy birthday" over and over again. Hilarious, she sings it most often to herself, or Nee (Renee).

As far as academics go, she can now count to 8, without help. Recognises all her colours, with black being her favourite, and most shapes. She is also able to recognise her and her friends names at day care. Its all very impressive.

GROSS MOTOR

Chloe's confidence is OUT OF SIGHT in the water. She can now swim a few strokes to the wall and get out completely independently. Which going into summer makes me feel so much better about her water safety. She is fantastic in the lessons participating in every activity without argument, but is showing a reluctance to put her eyes in the water, but will do it. I thought it may have been a result of her hair getting longer and it running water into her eyes. So in an effort to correct it, I tied her hair back (squeeeeee! Yes! its long enough to tie now!!!!) But unfortunately that made no difference. I also trialled a pair of goggles last week during the lesson, they stayed on for about 2 minutes and were promptly ripped from her face. hahaha. So we continue to have issues there. Her favourite activity is DEFINITELY 'crocodile, crocodile' - often having us participate in this at home with her falling off the bed, the couch, the toybox, as opposed to the pool wall. It does drive us a little nuts how often we play that. hahaha. She's also developed really great water confidence, and will happily wade out into the deeper part of the pool without me. She's so very brave!

We haven't been to the park as much as we'd like lately, since Chloe is showing a preference of staying in. But when we do go she is very confident on all the equipment. She just loves to do 'big swings' on the swings and go down the slide on her own 'no mummy, bubbi do it'. She'll often play on the seesaw and sing the 'seesaw' song or play shopkeepers where she'll ask us what we'd like, turn to get it for us, then cheekily eat it herself. She thinks she's hysterical when she does that.

Chloe still seems to LOVE to dance, so much so I think I need to look into a new class for her. I am NOT going back to where we were with Ballet. Maybe next year? But she loves to 'spin' and do 'ballerina' where she will hold your hands, stand on one foot and point the other behind her. Its so sweet. She also loves to 'dance' to the wiggles and any other music, her dancing is more of a 'sway' with the occasional spin and bounce. If the music is more upbeat she may run around and squeal too.

Jumping has continued to be a bit of a challenge and love of little miss this past month. Despite the lack of ability she has to get off the ground independently, she knows she can do it when she holds your hands, or even better is on the bed. Eeeeeeck! We've made the decision that jumping on her own bed is not allowed, but ours is ok. The idea is that she wont get up and jump on her bed that way, when she's suppose to be asleep.

SLEEPING

So we have continued the no pull up for day sleeps at home and day care, and Chloe is accident free now at both for as long as I can remember. So YAY! She's also been waking in the morning with a dry pull up and taking herself to the toilet maybe an hour or so after waking. But does consistently ask to go to the toilet just before bedtime.... sometimes (hilariously) as a way of prolonging bedtime, but we're happy to oblige since its one step closer to doing away with nappies altogether! So when the weather gets warmer (maybe next school holidays) we're going to get rid of the pull up overnight too.... as long as this waking dry thing continues! She's such an overachiever!

We have dropped the tights for bedtime, in exchange for socks, just seemed easier, but she's been pulling those off (or they're coming off?!) most nights. Most nights she stays under the covers, but sometimes we need to pop back in overnight because she's cold and has called out to us. A quick pull of the blankie over her normally sends her straight back to sleep when that happens, but night wakings very rarely happen now. Thank goodness.

She has had a lot of naps in the car this month on the way too or from somewhere and generally transfers well. Sleep seems to be less vital now, whilst she falls asleep in our arms at 6-630 if she skips her nap, she can survive without it and isn't loosing her marbles if she does of an afternoon/evening. Same if we are going out of an evening, we just extend her sleep, or put her down later for her day nap and then she's golden til around 830.

Last month we had the issue of Chloe wanting us to sit and pat her to sleep. We quickly had enough of that and cut it out cold turkey, we were met with a few nights of her cracking it about not sitting with her. But after a few nights she gave up. We found that following daycare she always seemed to ask, so we asked them if they patted her to sleep. They were adamant they didn't need to, that she was one of the 'good ones'. But said some children were patted off to sleep. So with that information, we just figured she had seen others getting patted and was testing the boundaries. Now, with that corrected, she has started insisting that she take herself to bed on her own now. She'll hold her hand up at us and say 'no, bubbi do' and toddle off down the hall. We follow a few minutes after and there she is in bed, when she sees us she'll giggle. We'll give her a kiss, tell her she's so clever and such a good girl, say good night and move to the door. Here's hoping this little practice continues. Fingers crossed.

LOVES and HATES

Chloes loves this month are pretty standard for a 2 year old. With all the parties lately, she LOVES birthday parties, cake and chocolate - with all the overindulgence that's been had at the numerous celebrations. She also loves those coin operated cars you see in shops making it VERY hard and expensive - when we try to walk past one without a turn.

She also loves to pull various faces, with her most hilarious being her 'sad face'.

She continues to have her favourite people, which this month are Nee, Lei and Opa. She'll often ask to 'see lei?', want to sing happy birthday for Nee and tell everyone she's going to Opa's house. Its very sweet.

The last love this month is going to the beach, with the warmer weather creeping up, I am very much looking forward to taking her to the beach at any and every opportunity!

Her hates this month, are having her hair done (despite bribes of chocolate, bad mummy!), getting dressed and going out. Hilariously, Chloe much prefers to stay home, despite the fun activities on offer. As you can see in the video below. Thankfully hair washing and brushing is no longer an issue. YAY!

OTHER STUFF

Toilet training

Toilet training is officially ka-put! Donezo! Chloe is trained. We haven't had accidents out in SO VERY LONG! Yipppeeeeeee! We have had the occasional accident at home, bizarrely?! Often when we're playing.... but they are rare. Day care will also have the occasional accident, but again one at most in a week. And generally the accident is a dribble, no number 2s and not soaked through. So go Chloe! She is the envy of many parents as she is still considered 'young' to be trained. But now when I look back and take into consideration the few accidents she will have, I'm SOOOO glad to have done it whilst she is 'young'.

Fathers Day

This month we celebrated Fathers Day, but unfortunately it also fell on Chloe friends birthday and at the end of a pretty horrific 48 hour bug I caught. So we didn't really get a chance to celebrate in style for daddy dearest. Instead we had a simple morning of yummy brekkie at home and gifts of undies and coat hangers for Jarratt. But being the practical parent he is, he loved it! And I mean, it was slightly better than say, an orchid. hehehe. We spent the afternoon (post party) at Carss Park playing and drinking coffee, so whilst it was a modest celebration, it was perfect.

Playschool

This month, Chloe and besties Ellie and Ayla (along with Zo-zo) headed to sharkies for the Playschool concert. Just like last year we got there nice and early and got ripper front row seats! Chloe and the girls were perfect, staying behind the white line as directed and dancing to the performance of Tao and Abby Tucker. The concert included some of Chloe's favourite songs like 'twinkle twinkle', 'row row, row your boat' and 'polly put the kettle on', she stood for most of the first part, swaying and doing the movements to the songs. She was so cute! Afterwards we even got to meet Tao (squeal!) and she was rewarded for her fantastic behaviour with a Jemima Ballerina (for 26 bucks! YIKES) despite mummy trying to entice her to pick the ($2) placemat!

Modelling

Chloe reshot her head shots for Bambini this month and was an absolute professional. Posing this way and that, and completing outfit changes no worries - given our current hate of getting dressed, I was cheerin! She hasn't booked any work in MONTHS and whilst it is disheartening, given the nature of the business, it is to be expected. We're hopeful she'll get some work with Christmas coming up, but it really is luck more than skill (which she has buckets of as you can see below) in whether or not you get a photo shoot. So keep your fingers crossed for us.